Predrag Popovic, USA

Predrag Popovic, USA, Vice-President and Senior Prinicipal at Wiss Janney, Elstner Associates Chicago, former President of IABSE, has been awarded Honorary Membership “in high appreciation of his outstanding and dedicated services to the Association”. The Award will be presented on occasion of the Annual Meetings and 37th IABSE Symposium to be held in Madrid from August 31 to September 5, 2014.

Pete Popovic’s fields of expertise are the design, assessment and repairs of bridges and buildings. He has in particular expertise in assessment and repair of concrete structures and of fatigue damage in steel bridges, and exterior facades of high-rise buildings. During the first 10 years of practice, he participated in structural design of major steel bridges and rapid transit systems in Chicago, New York and Atlanta, USA. He was engaged in the design of post-tensioned box girder bridges in Kuwait. Over the last 30 years, he has evaluated and designed repairs for over 1500 structures. Major projects included assessment of steel bridges for fatigue damage, investigation of collapses of bridges and buildings, assessment and design of repairs for exterior facades of high-rise buildings up to 60-stories tall, and assessment and repair of over 100 parking structures.

He has published over 40 technical papers on assessment, load testing, strengthening and repair of bridges, buildings and parking structures and is a contributing author to several books. He has received awards from the International Concrete Repair Institute for innovative repair projects and is an invited lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, USA and World of Concrete (USA and Mexico) on topics of concrete repairs, rehabilitation of parking structures, and prevention of structural failures.

Pete Popovic joined IABSE as a Member in 1985, and has since then been involved in many activities within the Association. He has been a member and the Chair of Working Commission 8; a Member of the Technical Committee and of the Outstanding Structure Award Committee. He has been involved in many IABSE Conferences, and in particular as the Chair of the Organising Committee of the outstanding 17th IABSE Congress in Chicago 2008. He served as Vice-President on the Executive Committee (2005-2009), which he subsequently chaired as an exceptionally enthusiastic and committed President of IABSE (2010–2013). Today he is a Member on the Advisory Board of the Executive Committee and an Alternate Delegate to the Permanent Committee.